Home Is Where The Heart Is
by drinkthekoolaidjones
Summary: Scully finds her relationship with Mulder has grown when she returns home after a week away.


HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

By: drinkthekoolaidjones

Rating: PG

Keywords: MSR, Vignette

Spoilers: None

Summary: Scully finds her relationship with Mulder has grown when she returns home after a week away.

XX

FBI HEADQUARTERS

WASHINGTON, DC

8.25AM

Empty foam coffee cups, discarded fast food wrappers and balls of crushed notepaper dot the floor surrounding the overflowing wastebasket. Fresh coffee and stale aftershave taint the stuffy air of the basement office. Above the room's only desk, the ceiling is spiked with pencils. Agent Dana Scully's lazer sharp eyes scan the bulletin board. Reports, photographs, and newspaper clippings relating to alien abductions clutter the unorganized backdrop. Stonehenge, Bigfoot, Lochness Monster, crop circles, the Viking Orbiter image of the face on Mars, the Nazca line drawings on the plains of Peru and even more insanity that she can not identify battles for dominance behind the piece de resistance.

A smile begins to form around her lips.

Mulder's UFO poster sticks out like a sore thumb amid the chaos."I WANT TO BELIEVE" it assures her, a weirdo's catchphrase in 300 point, capslock and bold. She shakes her head and gives his desk a once over, cataloguing the mess. His nameplate, dictionary of the occult, more pencils, unmarked video tapes, a half empty bag of sunflower seeds, and sloppy towers of file folders tagged with Xs litter the surface. The inbox is overflowing, the phone directories are piled at the edge of the desk's furthest corner. The telephone sits haphazardly atop a leaning tower of books, which are bookmarked with post-its and take-out menus. The final item she notices is propped up against the base of his computer. It is a photograph of a woman, a red head with a serious face and a tight smirk. It is a photo of herself.

The smile completely emerges and washes over her face. After a long, tedious week in Missouri consulting on a case, she is finally home.

Home is the place one goes to find solace from chaos, to find love within the confines of a merciless world and to be reminded that no matter how far away one ventures, there will always be that place waiting upon return. He waits for her now, sitting in the eye of the storm he calls an office. The infamous Agent Fox Mulder. His face is tense and glows silver-white above his slide projector. His eyes are hidden behind the light reflected off his reading glasses. He sorts through the slides, ignoring her whether on purpose or by preoccupation; it is impossible to tell. His appearance is as unkempt as his office. He wears a rumpled, white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, breast pocket sagging, weighted by his clip-on identification badge. His tie is loose and askew. A five o'clock shadow covers the lower half of his face. His hair is disheveled; a lone brown lock of it curls in the middle of his brow and she is tempted to hand him a comb. Or better yet, send him home for a shower and sleep. It appears as if he's been there the entire night.

He shuffles the slides with graceful hands, sorting, discarding and rearranging. His concentration is so great that his jaw hangs slightly agape and he breathes through his mouth. She is just about to alert him to her presence when his Adam's apple bobs. Excitement vibrates through his torso. He has found what he's looking for. He looks up in triumph, finally glancing her way. He seems almost startled to find her standing there, watching him. He blinks twice and a rare smile to match her own splits his face in two. She finds the open affection in his gaze momentarily blinding.

"I was only gone for a week, Mulder. This place is a pig sty."

"I've been redecorating," he gestures to the assortment of coffee cups and wrappers. "You don't like it?"

The delightful grin doesn't leave his face as he crosses the space between them and enfolds her in an even rarer hug. The phone calls, the insane amount of text messages all week long and now this very nice, very protracted hug; Mulder had missed her, that was blatantly obvious. And she was suffering the easily foreseeable consequences of firsthand contact with his emotions. She was becoming hooked on them. It all began when Mulder bestowed upon her a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something she never dared to admit she wanted. An emotional speedball of blooming love and thunderous desire, in the shape of a kiss, in an airport lobby. A promise that something more would be waiting for her when she returned, something deeper than ever before. Strangely, the wafting diesel fumes of the airport did not smell repugnant to her after their lips met for the first time, it assumed a peculiar pleasant aroma that morning, like the beginning of a new era, if an era could emit a fragrance. She had waited all week to get back to him, back to this new development.

Mulder drops a brief kiss on the top of her head and squeezes her tight. Her heart turns to mush as she registers the serious grip, his cheek to her hair, the little side to side sway. Mulder's hugs are impossible to resist, especially this one, which is warmer than a pile of winter blankets. Normally she avoided hugs. She had never been comfortable with physical demonstrations of affection, outside of the bedroom. But with Mulder she was learning that sometimes the right hug from the right person at the exact right time, makes the rest of the world disappear. She is hoping that holding him tighter will bring him closer, that she can hold him so hard that she'll still feel him, embossed on her, when he pulls away. It is in his loving embrace where she seeks and finds solace. Their love is enchanting and true, secretive and precious. It is theirs only and she treasures it, trying to keep it trapped between them. It doesn't work; when he finally releases her she feels the gaping loss of him and fights the urge to reach for him once more.

Mulder strokes her cheek with a gentle hand, his eyes are alight with the promise of more to come.

Scully knows first hand that life has the potential to break the spirit. No one person can guard another against that, but living alone won't offer protection either, for solitude will also break a person with its endless longing. Hearts have to love, they have to feel and she is ready to risk her heart. She is ready to be swallowed up by his love. The true lover is the one that shakes the soul awake, that starts a blazing a fire in the ribcage and brings the security of trust to the mind. He gives this to her and she to him as their lips meet for the second time. Their unhurried kiss ignites a need that engulfs both of them like an out of control brush fire. And although warning bells clang in her head louder than a Cathedral at Christmas, her body ignores the red alert and relishes the sensation of Mulder's mouth pouncing on the wet heat of her lips. His tongue demands to be let in and she allows it, more than that, she craves it. The fact that they are at work crosses her mind once again. She steals another moment to savor Mulder's gentle tongue sliding against, withdrawing and dancing with her own. He cups her face in his hands and deepens the kiss so rapidly that her head begins to swim. His mouth and tongue taste like warm coffee and the salt of sunflower seeds and she never wants it to end. But it can not continue here.

It takes a great effort, but she pushes gently against his chest. Signaling for him to stop.

Summoning every ounce of self-control he can muster, Mulder releases his hold on her and takes a small step back. They pant, starved of oxygen and stare at each other, not entirely surprised by the power of their connection. Mulder bemoans the loss of her lips by pouting and his body aches to return to hers. She is a spring in the middle of a desert oasis and he is so thirsty he might die of dehydration right there in his basement office. She is able to postpone his imminent death by closing the gap between them, rising to the tips of her toes and winding her arms around his neck.

"I think..." she murmurs against his lips, "we need to get out of here."

"I think... You're right," he murmurs back.

"At last," a smirk threatens at the corners of her mouth, "we agree on something."

FINIS

END NOTES: It seems to me that every time Scully has to work outside of The X-Files, Mulder gets all strangely mopey and territorial about it. (Squeeze, Chinga, Tithonus) I wanted to play with those feelings because I do enjoy them so much. We all know Mulder can't live without his Scully. Thanks CC.


End file.
